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Among the more everyday items are cleaning products, smartwatches, novelty T-shirts, knock-off sneakers and barbecue tools, but the common thread across all of them is that everything is incredibly, mindbogglingly cheap.

The company earned itself the nickname “the price butcher” during Black Friday sales last year, according to the China Project – and the total value of products sold on the site has gone from US$3m in September 2022, to US$400m in April.

The platform tells users to shop “like a billionaire”, and then gamifies the experience with interactive prize wheels and reward systems, and exploits buyers’ FOMO with countdown timers and rolling lightning sales and deals.

Unlike general retail, which imports large consignments of product, Temu’s logistics model for the US bundles individual customer packages together, USPS shipping labels attached.

Yang says if it wants to survive alongside giants like Amazon, the company must improve the shopping and delivery experience, and ensure higher and more consistent product quality.

“If the merchant economic dynamics continue to disproportionately favour the platform at the expense of sellers, and Temu fails to foster organic repeat purchases, its current rate of subsidized growth is untenable.”

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